


Almond Cake

by WhenIFindLoveAgain



Category: (여자)아이들 | (G)I-DLE
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Baking, Break Up, British, British Comedy, British English, British Slang, Childhood Memories, Comedy, Corsetry, England (Country), F/F, F/M, First Love, Happy, Happy Ending, Harvestfest, Heart-to-Heart, Heartache, Heartbreak, Honesty, Love, Memories, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Character Death, Parent Death, Post-Break Up, Swearing, Sweet, Talking, Tenderness, Uprooted Harvest Faire, Welsh Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27262327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIFindLoveAgain/pseuds/WhenIFindLoveAgain
Summary: When Yuqi spots her boyfriend emptying the village tart in the back of his Dads restaurant in the small coastal Cornish village where they live and love, it's a hilarious display for best friend Soyeon. Yuqi resolves to have revenge at the Harvest ball, but, due to a fight with other best friend and chauffeur Minnie, Yuqi is instead given a lift by old family friend, Mr. Jones, who Yuqi has a discussion with that is both healing, heartbreaking, sad, tender, and, loving.All has a happy ending.
Relationships: Jeon Soyeon/Song Yuqi, Song Yuqi/Minnie Nicha Yontararak
Kudos: 3





	Almond Cake

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, my loves! So, here we are - ALMOND CAKE. It probably is a funny thing to name a book after a dessert, but, just read. I gave a fairly good description in the summary of what to expect, but, please, read on. Trust me, it will do you good <3

Soyeon felt hot tears in her eyes as she laughed at the sight of her best friend's reaction to the genuinely devastating but hilarious sight of her boyfriend kissing another girl in the back rooms of his Father's converted-flour-mill restaurant, the two infidel lover's nestled up together on a pile of old sacks in a dingy corner, now flooded with winter evening light by Yuqi putting the high heel of her shoe through one of the dingy window panes to squint glaringly to the couple through it.

Then came this.

"I'm going to get through there and kick your arse!" Yuqi hollered vengefully, shoving over the rest of the frame and sticking the upper half of her body through the window on the stairs, standing on stacked brewary crates outside.

Soyeon tipped back as she cackled, and, stumbled to her knees on the ground, helpless with laughter and love for her best friend.

"YOU CUUUUUUUNT!" Yuqi dead-panned roared in a way that Soyeon knew would make their other close friend Soojin very, very proud. 

It was later that week this event that Yuqi and Soyeon discussed over one appropriate and high-calorie loveliness with a huge pot of green tea:

Almond cake.

"BITCH!" Yuqi screech, renewedly pissed off, at the memory, her mouth full of cake. Soyeon laughed. 

"Oh, baby." Soyeon pressed Yuqi's hand, not quite knowing if it was her boyfriend or his new woman that Yuqi was calling a bitch, but, knowing Yuqi, she probably meant the two of the twats. 

"Ah et im." Yuqi put her hand over her mouth which she have shoved more almond cake to in a fit of politeness and not to blind Soyeon by the sight, pointing at her but speaking of her boyfriend. "Ah uh-hin et him."

And, Soyeon knew that Yuqi would.

"PULL IT HARDER YOU BITCH!" Yuqi roared at other best friend and expert dressmaker, Minnie, bent over the vanity table in her bedroom as Minnie squished and squashed her into the exquisite gown that she had made for Yuqi.

Yuqi's revenge had been to go to the Harvest Ball with a "hot new babe" and, have "a little conversation" to her boyfriend's Dad at the ball which would result in the man who could have once been her father-in-law drowning the once future husband in a bowl of cherry wine, despite the latter being the former's first-born child. You didn't cause trouble like that in a Cornwall village like the one Yuqi and her friend's lived in and didn't either get stockwhipped, drown, smacked, or, widowed.

Yes, it does get that extreme.

"I don't care if you have to crush my rib-cage, get me into it!" Yuqi howled as Minnie fitted her into the corset that lay beneath the hand-embroidered French silk-crepe gown. "I must and will look better than anyone else!"

"You're the only woman in Cornwall wearing a corset." Minnie told her, pulling hard on the corset's ties.

"Yeah, because the others are all frumps with sagging tits - middle aged and elderly - or they are footballer's wives who are only skinny through secret smoking, gossiping, whinging, cheating, black coffee and laxatives!" Yuqi screamed.

Minnie howled laughter, letting go of the corset laces, stepping back and flumping onto Yuqi's bed and Yuqi breathed in and out heavily, the pressure from the corset on her relieved by Minnie not tugging at it anymore even though Yuqi insisted on the tugging. "Oh, you're evil." Minnie told Yuqi, wiping wet eyes. "Come on, sweetheart, let's get you into this bloody thing. Glad to see you didn't give up almond cake over boys..."

"Fucking never." Yuqi said, sucking in her stomach as Minnie re-fitted the corset around her and went to pull again.

Out in the Cornish countryside, blackbirds flew from the anicent Acorn trees in fright as a young Chinese woman howled.

Minnie had promised to drive Yuqi to the Harvest Ball in the village centre, but, as she went to start her Volkswagen hatchback, it backfired, and, a horrific whine from the engine filled up the air.

The two girls looked at one another, utterly aghast.

"Oh my God." Yuqi muttered, and, rushed out of the car to help Minnie see what was wrong, but, in the end, they ended up fighting as stress, heartache, anger, and, inpatience filled up Yuqi to the brim, and, Minnie fell under the weight of being crushed by her lack of mechanic skills.

"You're the shit that bought a cocking Volkswagen!" Yuqi threw her hands up in the air. "No wonder no one in Cornwall will spend money with you WHEN YOU DRIVE A GERMAN CAR!"

Minnie scowled indignantly. "Maybe the inbred retards in this part of the world should learn it's not 1945!" She snapped. "The war's been over for DECADES!"

"EVERYBODY FUCKING KNOWS THAT THE KRAUT SCUM WHO DON'T THINK THEY DID THE WRONG THING BECAUSE THEY STILL BELIEVE THAT WE ARE A SUB-HUMAN RACE TO THEM MAKE SHIT CARS!" Yuqi didn't let it drop.

Minnie managed to start the Volkswagen, but, in such a vicious temper with Yuqi, she told the girl to bugger off, and, no wonder her boyfriend was caught snogging the pub-owner's lass in the back room of his old man's restaurant. 

"I'LL FUCKING WALK!" Yuqi screeched after the disappearing rear of Minnie's car. "IT'S ONLY SIX MILES!"

But, then, it hit her.

Six bloody miles.

Oh God.

Yuqi had managed about half of a quarter of a mile when a horn blasted through the air, and, as a result, she fell over from been so frightened.

A enormous dark green tractor with headlights brighter than the sun looked at her.

"YUQI!" A deep Welsh voice called out.

Yuqi burst out laughing, and, carefully, got to her feet, dusting off her dress and checking her shoes.

There was only one man in the world that that voice belonged to:

Tudur Jones.

"Can I give you a lift somewhere, cariad?" He called out, opening the door of the tractor's cabin and peering down at her with sweet teddy-bear like dark eyes framed with thick eye-lashes in his ovular face face with his latte-brown skin, thick silver hair that was once as black as coal. Yuqi often thought that Tudur Jones looked like Roger Lloyd-Pack, but, was more rugged than the actor.

"Oh, Mr. Jones, I absolutely love you, darl'." Yuqi got up onto the rungs of the tractor, kissed the seventy-something man's wrinkling cheek, and, she climbed properly into the cabin. Yuqi sat half on top of the old man in the tractor, her bottom on the edge of the seat with her thighs and legs over his laps and her feet in her high-heels hanging out the tractor, the cabin not wide enough for her to pull her legs up without clocking Mr. Jones, so, hanging her feet out of the tractor it was.

"You look beautiful, me love." The old man kissed her back. "Dunno why you bother with that little cunt."

Yuqi laughed. "Your Darryn not's married yet, is he?" She asked.

"Oh, my love, I wouldn't be going there." Mr Jones shook his head. "I got him a girl from the homeland."

Shit, Yuqi thought. There was no way in hell she could top a Native Cymry woman. Not a hope in bloody hell could she ever manage to sway Darryn Jones's type from a warrior woman with anger managment and self-esteem issues with skin the colour of elm tree bark and rich black hair to a pale-skinned, light-brown haired doll-like Han girl.

"You look very special." The old man glanced at her as he drove along, his enormous tractor taking up the whole road. "Revenge, is it?"

Yuqi looked down at herself in her cinched-waist pencil dress with the ankle-length hem and the qi-pao neck finish, the sleeveless bodice finished impeccably by Minnie's professional hands that were always scented with Nivea hand-cream. I'm going to have to apologise so much to her, Yuqi thought, gazing at a embroidered swallow on the dress, done over hours and hours of work by Minnie in her attic studio of her sand-stone cottage.

Twenty minutes later, the Welshman had Yuqi delivered into down.

"If I had some grander rags in, I'd walk you in myself." The old man patted Yuqi's moussed hair as she climbed down carefully on the rungs, and, stopped to listen to him. "If you ever want a good whinge, your always welcome to come around to mine and have some tea." His teddy-bear eyes glowed. "Yer Mam er so good to me, cariad, nursin' for my Gwyneth when she goh cancer in all er bo'y." He murmured, his Welsh accent coming through so profoundly thick that something deep in Yuqi illuminated and smouldered.

Love.

"Your like a second Dad to me." She whispered. "It's not being the same since Mum died." She leant her forehead tenderly against his shoulder. "I'll bake you some almond cake." She told him. 

"Like me Gwyneth did." Mr. Jones said husked-tone. "Like your Mam, did. Go on, darlin'. See you tomorrow, but none too early, ei?" He chuckled softly into Yuqi's hair, and, she got down the rest of the rungs, and, waved goodbye to Mr. Jones as he went away in his tractor with the blast of the horn, Yuqi standing outside the village's large hotel where the ball was being held.

Sure enough, when Yuqi went inside, her boyfriend was inside the drawing room with a whiskey and his new girlfriend in a ill-fitting black cotton dress. Yuqi gazed at them without them seeing her.

You know what? Yuqi thought of the young man she had once loved so much. You're not good enough. You don't deserve me. Not one single bloody bit. 

Yuqi got her phone from inside her bodice and called Soyeon. 

"Fuck this." Yuqi told her. "Come down to the George's hotel with me in your grand rags, let's get drunk, dance on tables, just generally do something to make people swear about "bloody slope-eyed immigrants"." 

Soyeon laughed on the other end of the line. "I'm right here, babes."

Yuqi turned around to see Soyeon standing at the entrance of the hotel, phone to her ear, wearing a black satin wrap-waist pencil dress with a ankle-length hem and black ballet flats with her hair loose and big and natural around her heart-shaped features. Soyeon waved and smiled. Yuqi looked at Soyeon across from the entrance hall with a grin but still talked to her through the phone.

"Give me a minute." Yuqi told her. "Get us some plonk, I've got to do something first, no violence, I swear, promise."

Soyeon blew her a kiss. "Love you."

Yuqi's heart swelled gently. "Love you, too." She told Soyeon softly.

Soyeon disappeared from the entrance of the hotel, and, with a big, deep breath, Yuqi called Minnie.

"I'm so sorry, baby." Yuqi said.

Minnie sniffed. Yuqi's stomach dropped. Minnie was crying.

Ah, shit! Went through Yuqi's head.

It took a very long time for Minnie to answer.

"Y-you're right." Minnie eventually managed to answer, and, sniffed again. Yuqi was about to ask her what she meant when Minnie said, "That VW of mine really is a shit car."

Yuqi smiled to herself tenderly, a hand absent-mindedly pressing up over her collarbones, close to her heart. "Come down, luvvy?" She asked.

Minnie took a little while to answer again. "Not tonight." Minnie said. "Tomorrow." Another silence filled the air. "Cook almond cake."

Yuqi's eyes slid closed to half-lids, and, from the top of the staircase in the hall, her boyfriend's Dad looked down at her and wished that Yuqi would still be his daughter-to-be one day and not that tart whose Father owned the grotty bakery on Williamson street.

"There shall be almond cake." Yuqi promised Minnie, and, in that single sentence, that promise, the world shone, absolutely beautiful and dazzling and warm.

All was right in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> What do you think? Leave me kudos and comments, and, you're always welcome to come back for more


End file.
